Thursday, January 14, 2016

Those of you eager to experience The Future, in the form of Super Cruise, GM’s hands-free semi-autonomous cruise control, will have to wait a little longer than you might have expected. The feature, which debuts on the Cadillac CT6 and which was expected to arrive this year, won’t be offered until 2017, the company has confirmed.

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The system was first announced in 2012. In the fall of 2014, GM’s Mary Barra said that Super Cruise would debut on the upcoming Cadillac CT6 in “about two years.” That would put it in the market in late 2016. Now, however, GM is saying that it will be 2017 before hands-free, self-driving Caddys arrive.

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Cadillac spokesman Dave Caldwell refused to characterize the 2017 date as a delay, saying instead: “Now that we’re further along, we have a better idea of the exact timing,” which he gave as “about a year from now.” So, early 2017.

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A little more time in the oven might be worthwhile. Although automated steering currently is offered by Tesla, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and Infiniti, we’ve found the systems to be imperfect, with varying degrees of effectiveness. Tesla’s Autopilot—which we’ve tested a couple of times, including in our own long-term Model S—was much ballyhooed at its launch last year, but the company recently announced that it is circumscribing some of that system’s capabilities.